Assisting undocumented siblings and their overstayed mother to return home
A pair of siblings barely over two years old were undocumented. Their mother, once a migrant domestic worker in Hong Kong, had long overstayed her visa.
While her eldest child had a birth certificate, the younger ones did not and were therefore ineligible for passports. She desperately wanted to return home with her children to her partner, who had already left Hong Kong and returned to the Philippines, their home country.
However, financial and institutional barriers stood in the way of this family reunion. In response, PathFinders worked to collect as much information about the babies’ births as possible – including collecting documentary evidence from the hospital. PathFinders quickly began working on acquiring the birth certificates and passports. Once the babies both had birth certificates, PathFinders worked with the Filipino consulate in Hong Kong to apply for passports, provide shelter for the whole family, and arrange air travel back to the Philippines.